ISBE DELL Newsletter 2014.256 - Professional Development in Bloom

March has brought us paczkis and many hues of green. Today our special issue DELL newsletter is focused on upcoming professional development opportunities. Please take some time to consider and register for these important workshops.

Professional Development: Registration for Workshops

Districts are invited to participate in workshops that the World Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Consortium is providing in Illinois at ISBE’s request in April, May, and June.

There are no registration or participation fees for IL districts. Districts are encouraged to send teams of 2-3 teachers (EL and general education) to each workshop. Detailed information about workshop times and locations are listed below. CPDUs will be provided.

English Language Development Standards in Action: Standards and Lesson Planning (basic) is based on a student-centered, teacher-focused approach to engage English Language Learners (ELLs) in academic language development. This interactive workshop provides a foundation for participants who are new to the WIDA ELD Standards. They will engage in hands-on activities that explore academic language to enhance student language learning in the classroom. This workshop has been designed for K-12 teachers, language specialists, administrators, and support staff. Participants will be able to describe:

academic language within the WIDA English Language Development Standards

the components of the WIDA ELD Standards Framework (Guiding Principles, Can Do Philosophy, Features of Academic Language, Performance Definitions, standards matrices)

the features of the amplified matrix

the elements of model performance indicators (MPIs)

English Language Development Standards in Action: Standards and Lesson Planning (advanced) will offer a review of the ELD Standards. The workshop will provide an in-depth opportunity to apply the ELD Standards to classroom instruction. Participants will explore the purpose and process of transforming the model performance indicators (MPIs) and apply these ideas to their specific educational settings. Participants will be able to:

discuss the importance of lesson planning for content and language development

create effective student profiles for language instruction

transform MPIs to reflect specific instructional settings

identify language goals for instruction and assessment

Data Analysis workshops for teachers. The workshop is intended exclusively for teams of two teachers (general education + EL teacher). The goal of the one-day data analysis workshop is to foster an environment for data-informed decision making around language proficiency and language development as it relates to the WIDA Standards Framework to support the academic success of language learners. Participants will be introduced to a data analysis process and will apply this process to their own classroom data. This workshop is designed for teachers who want to gain more experience analyzing data for classroom decision-making from a language lens. Participants will be able to:

describe the connection between the WIDA Standards Framework and classroom data

Space is limited to 30 participants for each of the Standards workshops, and 24 participants (12 teams of 2) for the Data workshops. Interested individuals will be registered on a first-come first-serve basis.